Behind Every Great Fortune
by zundaerazylym
Summary: "We were going to be a family, Sherlock. Why wasn't it enough?"
1. Chapter One

Sherlock almost doesn't recognise the shell of a man standing in the doorway of 221B.

"John?"

John's eyes, red and brimming with unshed tears, flick up to Sherlock's face without seeing him. He lets the duffel in his right hand fall to the floor before presenting Sherlock with the bundle of blankets that had been resting in the crook of his left arm. Sherlock takes it—it's warm, dense, and heavier than expected—and watches as John silently, slowly steps around him, making his way to the couch. He lies down as if his bones might break if he moves any faster than a slow crawl, turns to face the back of the couch, and stops moving.

The bundle gives a soft sound. Sherlock shifts a loose fold of cloth aside and discovers a small, red, squinched face. The baby lets out another small grunt and moves her lips. "John?" Sherlock asks again, cradling the infant and going to John's side.

John doesn't even give any sign that he's heard Sherlock.

At a loss, Sherlock places the baby in the bowl formed by the curve of John's body and the back cushions of the sofa. He goes back to his experiment, hoping that engaging in normal behaviour will make John stop being so... absent.

* * *

The baby is crying. Has been crying for nearly twenty minutes, and John still hasn't moved.

Sherlock is at his wit's end. Speaking to John has been ineffective. Touching him did nothing. Trying to move him nearly got Sherlock's fingers broken. Shouting only made the infant's shrieking worse. At a loss, he plucks the baby up and attempts to arrange her against his chest the way he's seen women do in the past; when she continues crying, he sits down at his laptop and consults Google for advice.

After ten more minutes of reading and trying to ignore infant cries directly next to his ear, Sherlock retrieves the duffel from the hall floor where John had dropped it. He places it on one of the kitchen chairs and clears the table one-handed, gritting his teeth against the wails and squalls.

Three spread towels later, he has the baby on the kitchen table and free of a full nappy. For something as foul in appearance as the contents of the nappy, there's very little odour; more consultation with Google informs him that he's seeing meconium, which then informs him that the infant is likely no more than a few days old. He glances back at John on the couch in concern. He'd been aware that Mary was due very soon, but John had not called for nearly two weeks—John's appearance in the doorway had been something of a surprise. Shouldn't they be with Mary?

The baby gives a fussy little grunt, snapping Sherlock out of his thoughts. YouTube helps him in correctly cleaning her, applying a new nappy, and then re-swaddling her; another video walks him through the process of putting together a bottle of infant formula and testing the temperature. He settles into his armchair with the baby and a bottle, cradling her in one arm and gently placing the nipple of the bottle against her lips with the other. She latches on and suckles greedily.

As she eats (drinks? Feeds? He's still not sure about the correct terminology), her sleepy, denim-blue eyes track around the room, sometimes settling on him but more often just drifting here and there, unfocussed and aimless. She does not start looking at his facial features individually until his face is roughly twenty-five centimetres from her, and her eyes do not follow him when he moves from side to side experimentally. Even so, something tells him that she _is _observing him on some instinctive level. She meets his gaze and they stare at each other for a long, long moment before her eyes begin to wander again.

When she decides she is done, Sherlock puts the bottle into a sealed container and stores it in the refrigerator—of the articles he's perused on his mobile, most agree that he will be feeding the infant again in two to three hours. He hopes that John recovers before then, but he knows it's unlikely. John still hasn't really forgiven Sherlock for his faked death, and Sherlock has _no _idea why John would ever trust him with his own baby after the row they'd had over the drugs use just before the Magnussen case, but... here he is, infant propped against his chest as he gently pats her back to assist the outgassing of ingested air bubbles (apparently referred to as 'burping').

Sherlock returns to the sitting room and stands in the sunlight streaming through the window, watching John's sides rise and fall with his breathing. He only has a vague idea of what has happened to drive John to 221B with his newborn daughter (what could it be but something to do with Mary?), but 'keep infant healthy' falls under the purview of the vow he'd made to the Watsons, and he'll be damned if he doesn't keep his word. Without information, however, he's flying blind—he can care for the infant, but caring for John is an altogether more complicated matter.

"John. Does she have a name?"

John's sides stop moving. After a long, tense moment, he resumes breathing and says nothing. Sherlock waits, but when the silence stretches on without any sign of being broken, he sighs and retreats to the kitchen.

* * *

Sherlock stares down at the open duffel bag.

The cold glint of the finish on John's gun stares back.

The gun is loaded, freshly oiled.

The baby mouths at Sherlock's neck; she's been sleeping on and off since Sherlock fed her two hours ago. If the Internet is correct, the increase in her mouthing behaviour is indicative of a returned appetite.

Sherlock picks up the gun and takes it to his room. Baby in one arm, he kneels, pries back the loose floorboard beneath his bed, and places the gun beneath an old Upmann cigar box. Except for Sherlock's thumbprint from lifting it, the box is covered in a thin layer of dust.

As the baby nuzzles at his skin searchingly, Sherlock memorises the dust on the box's lid for future reference. He replaces the floorboard.

* * *

Six hours, three nappies, three feedings, two bouts of tears, and one last-ditch, hummed rendition of Mendelssohn's piano trios (effective, thank God) later, Sherlock is dozing in his armchair with the baby cradled against his chest when John rolls over and lets out a long, tired breath. "She left," he croaks, so quiet that Sherlock nearly misses it. "She left."

Sherlock furrows his brow. Whether John is speaking euphemistically or literally isn't very clear; his expression is blank and hollow. "Mary?"

John flinches at the name. "Left me. Left us. Told me she'd thought about it, said she'd... changed her mind, said... but she ran away, she left us behind." He speaks in clipped, monotone snippets; every word seems to be a fight to get out. He looks up at Sherlock, teary eyed and expressionless. "Why wasn't I enough? Why weren't _we _enough?"

Sherlock opens and closes his mouth.

"I did everything for her. We made a life together. Had a flat, a wedding, a gorgeous wedding. I... I forgave her. I loved her. Told her every night. Held her. Bought her things—the coat, the scarf, those were me." John glances up at the window, around the room. Briefly, his eyes settle on the baby where she rests on Sherlock's chest, asleep. His face undergoes a lightning contortion of emotions—love, grief, hate, guilt, hopeless adoration, grief again. "We were going to be a family, Sherlock. Why wasn't it enough?" Tears are streaming freely down his face, yet his expression has gone flat. It's disconcerting. "Why is what I do never enough? Do I not deserve it?"

Sherlock is on his feet and kneeling by the sofa in a flash. "John. John, you deserve it. You did everything right." Even with his temper and his addiction to danger, John had never failed to do right by Mary, at least as far as Sherlock understood it. John had forgiven her for shooting Sherlock, and Sherlock was John's best friend. How was that not the height of magnanimity and trust? Mary had been fortunate—blessed, even, though Sherlock hates the word with its theistic overtones—to have someone as intensely loyal, steadfast, and nurturing as John in her life. Sherlock hates how much energy John had expended on her, how she had him wrapped around her finger, how she supplanted Sherlock in his life, but... John had been happy. John should be happy, deserves to be happy. "You deserve to be happy."

"She still left."

Sherlock doesn't have a response for that. Instead, he presents John with his daughter, sleepy and bundled up in her blanket again. "Skin to skin contact is beneficial for the infant's sense of security and bonding," he says.

For a moment, John just looks at Sherlock with an inscrutable expression. Just when Sherlock is about to give up and return the baby to his own shoulder, John begins to unbutton his cardigan.

Sherlock almost lets out an audible sigh of relief. He's proven competent at tending to the infant, but he knows his limits. He won't be able to do it alone.

* * *

The appearance of a black saloon outside of the Sainsbury's is not a surprise. The person sitting inside the saloon when Sherlock throws open the door, however, is.

"Sherlock," Mary says quietly, eyes scanning the bags of nappies, formula, blankets, 'onesies', and other infant accoutrements. She is wan and drawn, but she is impeccably dressed.

Sherlock places the bags into the car, gets in, and shuts the door. He jams his hands into his coat pockets. "One question," he says, quiet and menacing but hopefully loud enough to mask the sound of his thumb working the keys of his mobile. "Why would you do this?" When no answer is forthcoming, he tries again. "Answer me. Why would you do something so cruel as this?"

Mary sniffs disdainfully. "You make it sound like I've got a monopoly on cruelty, Detective Not-Dead."

"I was protecting him."

"You assume I'm not?"

That catches Sherlock. "Explain."

Mary shrugs. "It's that simple. If I stay, John and the baby die. If I go, they live."

"Why?" Sherlock demands.

"Because I was the one assigned to kill John," Mary replies evenly. "The endgame to Jim's endgame, if you will. Did you honestly believe he didn't know you had a way out? He expected you to come back, and when you did, I was supposed to kill John on our wedding day, during _your_speech."

It feels as if Sherlock's heart has just twisted around in his chest, or stopped beating, or perhaps suddenly and inexplicably transmuted to ice cold lead. "You... what?"

Sighing, Mary rolls her eyes. "Classic Trojan horse, Sherlock—get within the walls, raze the city to the ground." She shakes her head in disappointment. "Between you and Jim, I'm not sure who's the bigger idiot."

Being on the back foot does not feel good. "Explain," Sherlock grits out. "Explain, and then explain to me why I should not deal with you right this second."

Mary lazily draws a tiny pistol—a nickel finish Beretta 950BS with a custom wood grip, expensive, sentimental item—from the inside pocket of her blazer. She disengages the safety and rests the weapon atop her knee, pointed squarely at Sherlock. "Why don't we do things in the opposite order? You'll stay right there, Sherlock, because I will deal with you more quickly, and then where will John be?" She offers him a smile that isn't quite apologetic. "What else did you want me to explain?"

Sherlock leans back in the seat and withdraws his hands from his coat pockets, keeping them where Mary can see them clearly. "Why is John still alive if you were meant to kill him?"

"I fell in love," Mary replies simply. "I'm ex-intelligence, not inhuman. Jim always did forget that."

Unless Mary is even more of a sadist than Moriarty and is drawing out the kill, Sherlock is fairly certain she's being honest about that. "If you're not a threat, there shouldn't be any danger to John," he says. "Mycroft and I spent two years ensuring that Moriarty's organisation was... cleaned up."

Mary snorts. "You poor thing," she chuckles. "You caused us problems, there's no doubt about that—accounts closed, schemes exposed, murders solved, the whole lot—but the whole _empire_? Jim's little 'consulting criminal' thing was a hobby, an outlet. Everything else was business until he fixated on you and started the whole serial-poisoner, blowing-shit-up nonsense."

The disdain in Mary's tone is not difficult to pick up on. "You disapproved," Sherlock ventures. Considering it again, he detects a trace of bitterness in Mary's tone as well. "You were in a position of influence, enough that when he began to deteriorate, your loss of power was marked."

"If Jim was you, as he liked to say, then it wouldn't be a stretch for me to say I was the John Watson to his Sherlock Holmes before he went off the rails."

Sherlock barely manages to stop his mouth falling open in shock.

"There were rules, then," Mary continues. "It wasn't hard to prove that we lost money when Jim indulged his sadism. The Litvinenko debacle was bad enough; the year he spent toying with all those little 'games' he set up for you, profits fell by over sixty percent." She shakes her head slowly. "I hated that year. Never did like a kill that wasn't clean."

"As opposed to clean ones, which you do like?" Sherlock snipes, attempting to gain some semblance of an upper hand. He doesn't like the thought that this... this _woman_ has been near John, much less married to him... in his _bed..._!

Mary gives Sherlock a bored look. "Really? You're going to pull the 'evil murderer' card now?" She sighs in disappointment. "God. When John puts a bullet in the heart of a cabbie instead of, oh, shooting out the window or the bastard's shoulder, it's not a problem? When you fake your own death to go traipsing around the world doing God only knows what—oh, wait, sorry, I _do _know, I've got the paperwork and the accounts to prove it—in the name of 'stopping Moriarty', it's not bad? Painting the patio with Magnussen's brains wasn't a fucking problem, but we're going to take issue with the fact that I, too, have killed people? We're going to go there now?"

"You did it for money," Sherlock protests.

"Jim trapped me and dragged me into the business," Mary retorts, gesturing firmly with the pistol, "but yeah, the money was good, and it was better than being tarred and feathered, waterboarded for information I didn't have, and then used as some sick fuck's toy once I got sent off to Gitmo." She takes a moment, breathing heavily, her gaze faraway and troubled. When she comes back to herself and the conversation, her mouth curls into a snarl. "If Jim used money as a carrot for clients, I was the goddamn stick, and you know as well as I do that Jim's clients were _not _good people. Seventeen of the most disgusting, grasping, scheming, soulless _bastards _were lucky enough to get a bullet to the brain and little else." Mary leans into Sherlock's space, expression reproachful. "You flog and dismember dead bodies for fun and get pissy when _perfectly innocent_ people aren't getting killed in 'clever' or 'elegant' ways. You slip drugs into John's food and drink— your _best damn friend_, Sherlock, and you treat him like he's nothing more than a fucking _lab rat!_" She shakes her head. "Neither of us is fit to cast a single bloody stone at the other, wouldn't you say?"

The mobile is heavy in Sherlock's coat pocket. "You can't leave him," he says, resigned. "You can't leave him with the baby like this. You're his wife. This is going to kill him, Mary."

Mary clenches her jaw, closes her eyes, and takes a deep inhale-exhale through her nose. When she opens her eyes again, the mixture of regret and determination makes something in Sherlock's chest sink. That isn't the face of someone about to capitulate. "Sherlock. If I leave, he hurts. He hurts a lot, but he has our daughter, he has his life, and he has you. If I stay, if I don't take over the empire and redirect all the pent-up, viciously toxic antipathy you've managed to draw to yourself and the people you care about with your ham-fisted _bullshitting _over those two years, you'll learn that Jim's creative sadism really wasn't very unique after all."

Sherlock shakes his head. "I am apparently John's best friend and possibly an emotional crutch, yet you were willing to shoot me to keep me from exposing your past to John. Why the sudden change of heart?"

Tipping her head from side to side in a somewhat conciliatory gesture, Mary leans back and takes a deep breath. She looks exhausted, but there's grim resolve in the set of her jaw. "I panicked."

"Sentiment." Sherlock's tone is condescending.

"Don't even try to pretend you don't care," Mary growls. She glances out the window. "I'm going to do this, Sherlock. The empire can be collapsed, but it has to be done from the inside, and I have the in to do it." With her free hand, she pulls a flash drive from the breast pocket of her blazer. "There will be cases, Sherlock, the kind you like, but you're going to have to be prepared to deal with me treating you like an enemy if we cross paths. I can't keep John and the baby safe—I can't put an end to Jim's long games—if people get even the slightest inkling that I might have a weakness for them or for you, emotional or otherwise."

Taking the flash drive, Sherlock nods. As the car pulls up to 221B, he clenches his jaw. The mobile in his coat pocket may as well be a hot coal. "I made my vow," he says. "I intend to keep it."

Mary smiles. "Thank you."

In Sherlock's pocket, the mobile begins to cry. He freezes.

There's a long moment where the only noise in the car is the sound of the baby's cries through the phone.

Mary closes her eyes and laughs. It sounds flat, broken. "Get out of my fucking car, Sherlock."

Sherlock gets out of the car. He gathers the bags as Mary unseals the divider; briefly, he catches a glimpse of the driver's seat—it's a complicated, messy tangle of electric motors and wires below the waist of the dummy driver.

Mary leans forward to speak to the heavy sitting in the passenger seat as the door shuts. Nickel glints in her off hand, against the back of the passenger headrest. The saloon rolls away.

The tinted windows aren't enough to mask the flash of a gun firing.

* * *

Notes: "Behind every great fortune, there is a crime." - Honoré de Balzac

Inspired heavily by the Mary-as-Moran hypothesis and by Michael Corleone's story throughout The Godfather.

This was my first shot at writing something more serious. Hopefully I didn't bodge it too badly.


	2. Chapter Two

Hello, all. Apologies for the long quiet; life has essentially consisted of sleep, teaching, and writing lesson plans as of late.

This is posted under "All but the Things that Cannot Be Torn" on Archive Of Our Own. It'll be posted under Behind Every Great Fortune here on fanfiction dot net. The title comes from the following:

"Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be." - Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

So, without further ado: All but the Things that Cannot Be Torn.

* * *

John is on the couch again when Sherlock ascends the steps to 221B. He doesn't respond to Sherlock's noise or the baby crying in Sherlock's armchair; heaving a quiet sigh, Sherlock leaves the bags on the sitting room floor and collects Baby Watson from the chair.

He's halfway through a feed when Mycroft appears in the kitchen doorway. "Brother," he growls.

Mycroft stares at the baby in Sherlock's arms. She's eating heartily, apparently unperturbed by her father's distress. "Sherlock, _what _have you done?" Mycroft breathes.

After a long, frigid moment of insulted silence, Sherlock hisses, "Get out."

Predictably, Mycroft does exactly the opposite of what Sherlock wants—he sets his umbrella aside and strides around the table, looming over Sherlock like he thinks it'll make Sherlock more inclined to obey. "Sherlock Holmes, whatever you've done, you need to return that child to her mother _right this instant_."

Sherlock stands carefully but decisively and brushes past Mycroft, going to his Belstaff where it hangs by the front door. He jerks his head to indicate the coat. "You have a bug in my mobile; the last call made will explain. Get it and then _get. out._"

He can see it when Mycroft notices John motionless on the couch and the bags of baby equipment on the floor. He can see the recalculations happening, followed shortly by the conclusion that yes, Mycroft has squarely put his foot in it. Wordlessly, the elder Holmes collects Sherlock's mobile, tucks it away into a pocket, and departs.

Readjusting the baby, Sherlock tips the bottle up a bit; she's still eating, if slowly. For a moment, he considers the empty space by John's feet on the couch. For another moment, he considers the tense line of John's back and the way his toes are tightly curled. He returns to the kitchen.

* * *

Hours come and go. The baby eats, cries, defecates, and drowses; Sherlock feeds, soothes, changes, and settles her. When he realises that the cadence she's established is similar to his own natural rhythms (a fortunate thing for her, really), he begins to wonder what else about her he might quantify. Shortly thereafter, he sacrifices a blank notebook to science, retrieves his personal stethoscope from his closet, and commences baseline measurements.

She is forty-eight point five three centimetres from the top of her head to the tips of her toes; this, according to the Internet, is within average bounds. Her heart and breathing sound normal, though he has to consult the Internet again to ensure that a heart rate of one hundred and thirty four beats per minute is normal (it is). As she did not protest being uncurled a bit to obtain the length measurement, Sherlock gently lifts her and sets her on the kitchen scale. She does not fuss about this, either—she merely watches with her peculiar, unfocussed gaze as he notes that she has a mass of three point two six kilograms.

The Internet informs him that the baby's eye colour is not permanent, but he notes it nonetheless, even going so far as to fetch his paint swatches to match it as precisely as possible. Delving into the genetics of eye colour reveals that the phenotype is infuriatingly difficult to predict with precision, so he makes do with what he can and gives a general prediction of 'dark blue'. He does not note his bias toward a particular denim-and-hazel.

Slow footsteps on the stair draw Sherlock out of his typing and notating. Sighing, he tucks the baby into the wicker 'Moses basket' and goes back to note-taking. Guilt is such a boring emotion.

Mycroft appears in the kitchen doorway. Rather than announce himself verbally, he presents Sherlock with the baby's birth certificate and her chart from the hospital.

It's as much of a peace offering as Sherlock suspects he'll get, and Sherlock is not above taking advantage of a guilty conscience (however underdeveloped that conscience may be). He accepts the papers and his brother's presence with a sneer and little else. Mycroft, though meddlesome, will invariably prove a valuable resource in the long run, particularly if Mary becomes involved in any of his cases. "What do you intend to do?" he asks quietly, glancing up from his laptop screen long enough to see that Mycroft has seated himself at the kitchen table as well.

"For the time being, she is merely being watched. Interference is too risky," Mycroft replies. His eyes go from the wicker basket to the open notebook by Sherlock's elbow. Sherlock's script is messy, but Mycroft has years of experience reading it from all angles—the table of feeding times and volumes under the baby's heart rate, length, and weight may as well be in bold, plain print. "You really do intend to go through with this, brother?"

Sherlock rolls his eyes. The answer to that question is obvious enough. Instead, he looks over the certificate of birth. "She is unnamed," he remarks. The blank space on the page is irrationally troubling.

Mycroft nods. "An infant must be registered within forty-two days of birth," he replies, running one fingertip over the embossed border of the certificate. "John has forty days to do so, if security footage of the hospital is accurate."

There's a period of quiet.

"I have granted you access to your fund," Mycroft says at length.

Sherlock looks up sharply.

Rolling his eyes, Mycroft sighs. "Don't look so shocked. You have been... _ogling _that stem cell extraction adaptor for weeks, yet you spent more than half of the money you'd saved for it on equipment for the infant?" He shakes his head. "I never thought I would witness such a thing, not after you tried to—"

"Yes, yes, fine, thank you, is that what you want to hear?" Sherlock interjects, glancing into the sitting room. Learning of Sherlock's attempts to sell superfluous organs to black market dealers for drugs money would be deleterious to John's already-compromised stability (nevermind that the incident took place nearly seven years ago), so Sherlock cannot have that. "If you're not going to be of any further help, leave. You'll wake the baby." He goes back to his research and notation despite the lack of anything new to record.

Thankfully, Mycroft obeys. Until the baby wakes an hour later, the quiet in the flat goes uninterrupted.

* * *

The baby is asleep when the clock in the corner of Sherlock's laptop screen ticks over into zeroes. He sighs and stretches in his armchair, toes flexing and curling—of all the things he expected to find online, an evidence-based parenting and feeding website was not one of them, but the surprise is a happy one. He's been engrossed for hours, only pausing in his reading to feed and check the baby (21:55, 15.5 mL, unsoiled diaper) or move her from his chest to the basket and vice versa.

John doesn't appear to have moved during any of this time. He isn't asleep, judging by his breathing, but he's in exactly the same position as he had been.

As the baby is asleep, Sherlock stands from the armchair and tucks her basket into it in his place. He approaches John without bothering to walk quietly and sits down in the space at the end of the sofa where John's toes don't quite reach.

John kicks him with force. When Sherlock does not budge, John makes an animal sound and kicks him again.

Well, tries to kick him again. Sherlock seizes his ankle and pins it to the sofa, which John apparently takes as his cue to lunge for Sherlock (how he does that from his side and with his upper leg pinned, Sherlock does not know) with his teeth bared and his eyes flashing. Three years earlier, Sherlock might not have reacted in time to defend himself, but his reflexes have been honed with two long, tense years of frequent use. He releases John's ankle and goes instead for his wrists, drawing John into a grapple that sends them tumbling to the floor. Penned by the couch and the coffee table, Sherlock's guile and flexibility win out—he's able to maintain his position on top and flip John over, pinning him in place.

"What do you _want?_" John snarls, thrashing.

Sherlock keeps John pinned. "You have not moved for over eight hours."

John goes still. He's breathing with heavy, growling huffs, much the way he had when Sherlock had first revealed himself at the restaurant. Between Sherlock's knees, John's hands clench and unclench. Sherlock harbours no delusions of safety; if he lets go, John will do him grievous injury.

That or do himself grievous injury. The former is undesirable; the latter is unacceptable.

"Why do you—" John starts, clenching jaw and fists briefly, "—why do you care?"

Sherlock bows his head over John's back. "Does it matter?"

"Yes," John replies, voice flat and cold.

There are a number of possible answers. None of them are untrue, but some are denser truths than others.

Sherlock is a coward. "Your shoulder is already causing you pain, and staying on the couch will only worsen the problem."

"You sitting on me is worsening the problem," snaps John, and though his tone is combative, Sherlock feels the tension drain out of his back and arms.

Releasing his grip on John's wrists, Sherlock gets up and out of John's reach as quickly as possible without appearing fearful. He retreats to his armchair and the baby in her basket. "You may take my bed for the night," he says as he watches the baby sleep and listens to John stiffly, slowly getting back to his feet. "She will awaken shortly, and then two to three hours after that; it is likely that I will only nap."

Sherlock listens as slightly distressed breathing and the soft hush of wool on wool move across the room from the sofa to the kitchen. The sounds pause there suddenly, and the air in the room seems strangely charged as Sherlock realises that John must be looking at the notebook sitting open on the kitchen table. Thick paper rustles—John is looking at the birth certificate, too.

"Forty days," John says, and takes himself and his sounds down the hall to Sherlock's bedroom.

Whether he's telling Sherlock or reminding himself isn't clear.


	3. Chapter Three

On to chapter two. Hopefully this once-weekly schedule will continue to hold; with standardised testing bringing teaching to a standstill, I expect I should be able to get good work done as the kids sit around and watch movies (I hope they like Treasure Planet).

Yet again, any alerts as to Americanisms or other errors are much appreciated, as I have no beta or Britpicker to speak of.

Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

* * *

Morning arrives with wan, grey light and the kind of persistent, fine mist that leaves the unprepared gently drenched and chilled to the bone as soon as they're just too far away from home to turn back for a coat.

Sherlock stands in the window of 221B with the baby, watching passers-by and narrating his deconstruction of their most visible tells in a low murmur. "Barrister," he says as a man with an umbrella, a leather briefcase, and a finely tailored tweed greatcoat steps out of one of the flats across the street. "Expensive coat says wealthy, either currently or in the past; fashionable but understated cut and lapel style says independent wealth with a lower-middle class upbringing, though old money and a modest or clever nature are possible as well." The barrister flags down a cab; his left foot is plainly in the middle of a sizeable puddle. "Rich enough not to care about the state of his shoes or practical enough to have them waterproofed," Sherlock concludes.

Much like the skull, the baby doesn't have a verbal response; unlike the skull, she turns her head and roots about under his chin.

The microwave dings. Sherlock leaves the window and retrieves the bottle, swirling the contents and then testing them on his wrist before placing the nipple within the infant's hungry reach. Watching her latch on and begin to suckle is strangely gratifying.

The mist remains unrelenting, but Baker Street's morning stirrings continue apace. "Runner," Sherlock notes as a woman in black leggings and a stocking cap splashes through the puddle the barrister had been standing in a moment earlier. He resumes his position at the window, baby in one arm and bottle supported with the other. "Runner with a capital R, that is, to be out in this weather and at such a pace."

Shuffling in the hall announces John's wakefulness. Sherlock quietly monitors his friend's location by hearing again—the stiff, brisk post-night-terror movements nearly always come hand in hand with a temper on a very short, unpredictable fuse.

A slight change in the pressure on the bottle tells Sherlock that the baby is done eating. He pulls the nipple away from her lips with little trouble and notes the volume consumed (sixteen millilitres) before setting the bottle on the desk and exchanging it for the burping cloth. Spreading it over his shoulder, he rearranges the infant and pats her back firmly.

"Fucking bizarre," John mutters nearby. Sherlock turns just enough to see him watching the baby and Sherlock's hand with tired eyes. Over Sherlock's shoulder, the baby belches. John purses his lips and averts his gaze, studying the kitchen table. "She's eating, at least."

Sherlock regards John with a small frown. "She is well within normal ranges as far as appearance and behaviour are concerned—there is nothing bizarre about her."

John rolls his eyes, but the corners of his mouth threaten to curve upwards. "Not her, you git. You with a baby is weird. You with _my_ baby is—" It's clearly visible when the circumstances that have brought his baby into Sherlock's arms make themselves plain in the forefront of John's thoughts. His face falls into tired lines over a clenched jaw so suddenly it's almost audible. "It's fucking weird, is all." He limps into the kitchen in stony silence, his left fist clenching and unclenching, and grabs up Sherlock's pen. "What time did you feed her?"

"Five forty-nine," Sherlock responds, "and concluded at five fifty-seven. Sixteen millilitres, up from her previous feed."

Another hearty belch from the baby interrupts the sound of John scratching out the next entry in Sherlock's notebook. "You've been keeping tight records," John notes, scanning the tables with a doctor's eye. He looks up at Sherlock every so often, brow furrowed and lips tight. When he finishes reading, he braces both hands on the kitchen table. "Why." He clears his throat. "Why are you doing this?"

Sherlock lifts the corner of the burping towel and gently dabs at the baby's mouth. "She is interesting," he replies, though the _'because she is part of you'_ remains unsaid. Sherlock does not state the obvious. "Insofar as humanity is concerned, children are generally tolerable. Their dependency is excusable, their lack of knowledge is rectifiable, and their noise is relatively simple to filter." He holds the baby out and looks at her. She looks back with sleepy, squinted eyes and flexes her fingers. "She is an excellent audience."

John hangs his head over the notebook and his hands curl into fists on the table. "She had better not be an experiment, Sherlock. If she's just a replacement for the skull or a convenient way to pass the time until the next case..."

"Don't be ridiculous," Sherlock interrupts sharply, bringing the baby back to his shoulder to resume burping her. She is John's daughter and Sherlock made a _vow_—no, made _the_ vow, his first, last, and only vow. "I did not make that vow on a whim, John Watson. You'd do well to remember that before suggesting I am merely relieving boredom by _keeping your daughter alive._ I was not the one who ignored her not once but _twice_ as she lay crying."

The only thing stopping John from exploding (shouting and possibly punching Sherlock, if the set of his jaw and the whiteness of his knuckles are any indication) is the fact that Sherlock is holding the baby. Sherlock doesn't hesitate to heed his instinct to turn his body and put his shoulder between John and the baby. Body language will help drive the point home even more firmly—Sherlock should not be the only one shielding the baby, and John should not be the one from whom the baby needs shielding.

John's voice rasps and rumbles as he forces the words out from behind clenched teeth. "My whole life, every single person to matter to me at all has lied to me. Mum, Dad, you, and now my own fucking wife—what the fuck do you expect me to do, Sherlock, just pretend it didn't happen?"

Sherlock averts his eyes and dabs at the baby's mouth with the cloth. He keeps his body turned. "The Earth does not stop spinning for_feelings_," he says quietly. "Time will not wait for you to catch your breath or get back to your feet." He turns his head to nestle his face in the baby's side. The warmth and the soft, milky scent of her are soothing.

"Lovely, Sherlock, just lovely. What's your advice, then, if the world doesn't stop? Turn myself into a machine? Hate the world? Shoot up to forget?"

Such a response probably merits a much more contemptuous glare than the one Sherlock gives John, but the look serves its purpose. John crumples, dropping onto the couch heavily and burying his face in his hands. "Oh God. I'm sorry, Sherlock, I'm sorry. Fuck."

Sherlock drops the burping cloth in his armchair and joins John on the couch, sitting back and rearranging the baby so she's curled just under his chin. John flops back as well and stares at the ceiling. He looks exhausted, helpless. Diminished.

"If any of that would work," Sherlock says, breaking a long silence, "I would suggest it."

John's eyes close. "What do I do?"

It takes Sherlock a while to come up with an answer. He doesn't often get questions he can't answer readily. It's even more unusual for him to be in a situation where such a question cannot and should not be avoided.

Eventually, he recalls a conversation in the kitchen at home on a hot summer day in the early eighties. The scents of citrus and burnt paper seem fresh in his mind, even now. "My mother always says to take the lemons life gives you and make lemonade." He remembers the mathematics journal pinned to the wall, the two underscored lines, and the sheets of paper next to it covered in his mother's precise, elegant numerals, letters, and operations signs. "She also says that it's wholly unsatisfying advice until one recalls that the process of making lemonade involves cleaving said lemons in half, cramming them over a piece of hard, ridged plastic, and then crushing and wringing the liquid out of them."

John's eyes open. He glances over at Sherlock; alarm and reluctant amusement are at war on his face.

"If more catharsis is necessary, the citrus oil in the peel is quite volatile." Sherlock adds. He smiles. Mummy had been very happy indeed to learn that rejection letters and subsequent journal issues with identical corrections from a _man_ were eminently flammable; that had been a merry afternoon indeed.

* * *

"This is ridiculous," John growls at the laptop. Despite having the instructional video playing, he cannot seem to make sense of the material that he's meant to be tying around himself. Sherlock pauses in his folding to watch John fumble for a moment. "Bloody stupid thing," John mutters. A louder curse escapes him when, upon letting go of the ends of the wrap, the knot he'd tied comes undone and the entire thing unwraps itself.

Sherlock quickly folds away a soft cotton blanket and takes the wrap from John, taking his place in front of the laptop. He has the sling wrapped and tied off after just one viewing of the instructions. "Do you want me to tie it onto you?" Sherlock asks as John looks on with a mixture of aggravation and envy. "It shouldn't be any more difficult."

John shakes his head. "Nope. It's going to fly apart on me, and I'd rather the baby stay safe." He goes to fetch his daughter from her basket and hands her to Sherlock. "Figure out how to put her in it, and maybe I'll let you try to get it on me sometime later, once it's over its sulk."

Suspecting that John does not need to be reminded that cotton-spandex blends do not experience emotions, Sherlock accepts the baby and clicks to the 'Newborn Hold' step of the instructions. The baby isn't thrilled about the initial steps of getting situated in the wrap's material, but as soon as the folds of cloth are cradling her properly (Sherlock resolutely ignores John's startled look when he kisses the top of her head to ensure that she is sitting high enough in the sling), she settles against him and goes right to sleep.

John puts his folding aside and comes over to see. He's just tall enough to look into the sling. "She looks cosy," he remarks quietly.

"So she does," Sherlock agrees. He tests his mobility, gingerly at first but then with greater confidence. "This is surprisingly comfortable. It may tax your shoulder if you wear it all day, but I doubt you plan to take her to work with you."

John shakes his head. He looks down at Sherlock's hands, which have come up automatically to support the baby's warm bulk at his chest. Sherlock resists the temptation to move them away quickly. "How the hell do you make it look so easy?" he demands. His features and tone indicate that he is speaking humorously, but there is always a seed of something unhappy in jocularity. "Have you done this before? Is there a tiny Sherlock running around somewhere that I just don't know about?"

The baby's hands curl around the open placket of Sherlock's shirt. He is briefly distracted by the miniature perfection of her hands—it is very strange to think that he was such a size at one point. "No," he replies absently, "not unless Mycroft has been even more alarmingly meddlesome than I previously thought." He wonders if a series of sketches of the baby's hands as she grows would be useful somehow. He has to stop the train of thought; the idea that he might need such a thing in his line of work is unexpectedly, intensely abhorrent.

Downstairs, Mrs Hudson greets someone at the door. John's chin tips up and his back straightens; Sherlock recognises Lestrade's footfalls immediately.

The DI pauses in the door to the flat when he sees Sherlock. "Er." His brow furrows as he takes in the purple fabric of the sling and the fuzzy, peach dome of the baby's head. He doesn't seem to be quite able to process what he's seeing (no surprise there, really, but John would not like Sherlock thinking such uncharitable thoughts). "Should I... is that a _baby?_"

John drops his face into his palm with an audible smack.

"My God," Sherlock sighs, "your perspicacity truly knows no lower bounds. Yes, this is a baby, well spotted." He strides into the sitting room and retrieves his mobile from the desk. He pretends to check his texts as he uses the reflective screen to scour Lestrade for clues. "Unshaven, three different sorts of mud and grit on your pant legs and shoes—three crime scenes, but you wouldn't be here unless you suspected a connection, so what have you got for me?"

Lestrade looks to John. "You sure you want this in front of the baby?"

John looks at Lestrade, nonplussed. "The baby?"

"You know, talking about... dead people and all that, 's a bit not good for little ears?" Lestrade tries. When John merely gives him the same baffled look, he sighs. "Mary's gonna have—John? Hey, John? Where are you going?"

The door to Sherlock's bedroom slams behind John hard enough to rattle the glassware on the shelves in the kitchen. Sherlock lets out a long, irritated sigh. So much for the morning's progress. "Why, dear Detective Inspector, do you think John and his _newborn_ daughter are here, of all places?"

Lestrade goes pale. "Oh. Oh, buggering shite, Sherlock, you can't be serious. Is she...?"

"Dead," Sherlock lies. He watches the DI pull out a chair from the desk and take a seat heavily. "Postnatal complications." He pulls a notepad and biro free of a pile of files and papers, wielding them with a flourish. "You know from experience that John does not appreciate pity. Tell me about your crime scenes."

Appropriately chastised—Sherlock has heard the stories of John's less-than-stellar façade of civility whenever Lestrade had tried to visit—the DI shakes his head and withdraws his mobile from his breast pocket. "Three sites, like you said—hedge fund investor on a bench on the Bankside dock, a commodities trader in a first-floor flat on Lothbury Street, and a board member of a contracting firm just outside the Museum of London. The reports came in within thirty minutes of each other—museum first, docks second, and then the flat last. Hopkins wanted to call the last one a suicide, but there wasn't a bit of GSR anywhere on his hands or clothes. If he'd shot himself, we'd see GSR somewhere." He pulls up a photograph on his mobile and shows it to Sherlock.

"You're learning," Sherlock remarks approvingly. He points to the entry wound on the photo. "This was a contact shot—the burn pattern around the entry wound is the muzzle of a small firearm." Something in the back of his mind sends up a flag at 'small firearm'. "You said there was no discharge residue whatsoever?"

Lestrade shakes his head. "Not a bit. They're related, Sherlock, all three of the deaths—we've retrieved the bullets and they're all from the same weapon."

"Model?" Sherlock asks.

When Lestrade answers, "Beretta 950," the little flag in the back of Sherlock's mind glints with a cold, familiar nickel finish. He's done writing the name before Lestrade even finishes saying it.

"Are the bodies in the morgue?"

Lestrade nods. "They're with Molly. She'll hold them as long as she can, Sherlock, but you've got to be quick—the press are going to catch wind of this, and it won't be pretty."

Sherlock nods and stands, handing Lestrade his mobile. "Call my brother and give him the details of the case. I will be at Bart's as soon as possible."

* * *

John is lying on Sherlock's bed. The lights are off, but the feeble daylight through his window is enough to illuminate the miserable curl of John's body beneath the duvet. Sherlock stands in the doorway, hands over the baby for lack of a better place to put them. "Lestrade has a triple homicide. The bodies are at the morgue."

"And?" John grunts. His voice creaks.

Sherlock contemplates entering the room, but the doorway seems like the safest place to be at the moment. "I am going to the morgue to look at the bodies, John."

"So?"

Sherlock sighs. "I am wearing your daughter, John, and though my hands are free, I do not think that 'newborn infant' is appropriate laboratory dress."

John uncovers his head and meets Sherlock's gaze with his own reddened one. Sherlock is alarmed by the sight of moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes. "I still don't understand why you're doing this," John croaks.

His first step into the room isn't met with any negative responses, so Sherlock takes a few more and stops beside the bed. "I fail to see why," he replies evenly, quietly.

"You're... _you._" Before Sherlock can make a face at that truly dreadful argument, John presses on. "You're Sherlock Holmes and the game is on. My wife's out there running a criminal fucking empire, parts of said criminal empire want us dead, and yet you're in here making bottles and changing nappies and _talking to the baby_. You're wearing a bloody Boba Wrap, for fuck's sake, and paying attention to _safety_—why are you doing this, and when are you going to get bored and throw us out?"

Sherlock stares into John's eyes, shocked. "Why would I do that?"

"That's what people _do_," John replies, quiet and truthful.

The bed creaks as Sherlock slowly lowers his weight to the mattress. Hearing those words echoed to him, it's as if something heavy and cold has become trapped between his lungs. This particular vintage of resignation—this reluctant acceptance of a seemingly unbreakable trend in the things other people do—is all too familiar to Sherlock, even twenty years after moving past it. People lie. People take advantage until there's nothing left to take. People leave wounds. People leave.

Sherlock lets out a slow huff. "I am not people." He turns and looks down at John, holding his gaze. "You belong here, John." This is objective fact, as far as Sherlock is concerned. All of his belongings are placed and arranged to his liking, yet it's John's presence that adds some unquantifiable aspect to 221B that makes it more than merely a place to sleep uninterrupted when the whim takes him. In John's absence, his armchair's presence had so pointedly highlighted the lack of John in the flat that Sherlock had quickly been forced to move it upstairs in the hopes that he would be able to focus properly again (it hadn't worked as well as he'd liked). He isn't sure how to convey this to John without seeming disgustingly maudlin. "You... this is your _home._"

It takes a while, but when John finally responds—when he finally shifts just enough that he seems to be curled around Sherlock rather than himself—it feels like a victory.


	4. Chapter Four

It's spring break here and the game is on! I'm going to Chicago tomorrow to see my best friend. Am I strange for being *ridiculously excited* about riding the train out to his suburb? I really like trains...

I can't thank everyone enough for the supportive comments and kudos- I really hope that my first foray into this sort of genre continues to be enjoyable for you!

Unbetaed, so any feedback is highly appreciated. I've tried to do as much research as possible on ballistics, the weapon, and some of Sherlock's observations; between my own knowledge of physics and that, I'm hoping it's amounted to something believable (even if some of the marksmanship necessary is stretching the realm of the feasible just a bit).

* * *

"Gerald Ballinger, Marcus McConn, and Samuel Orson," Molly says, indicating each body. She levels disbelieving looks at John, the baby, Lestrade, and Sherlock, apparently shocked that any of them would allow the infant's presence in the morgue. When no one responds to the pointed looks, she sighs and gestures to the box of gloves resignedly. "They're all yours."

Lestrade stands off to the side next to John, who has the messenger bag of baby equipment over his right shoulder and the three victim profiles in his left hand. Sherlock prowls between the examination tables and works his hands into a pair of nitrile gloves. "This one," he says, pausing to flip the oldest victim's toe tag up. "Ballinger."

Papers rustle as John finds the relevant page in the files. "Shot on Bankside Pier at ten thirty yesterday morning," he reports. "Witness said he was there with his wife and saw her off on the ferry, then sat down to watch the boat go. She didn't see a flash, but she heard a pop and saw Ballinger's head jerk back—when she spotted the blood, she called police." He pages through the file some more. "The police didn't catch up with the ferry until nearly two hours later. They couldn't find any GSR when they brought in a dog to check."

Sherlock makes a noise of disgust. "Of course not." He confirms Molly's estimate of the angle of entry. "No exit wound—shot from a distance." He prods at the deformed bullet in the tray next to Ballinger's head, but stops when he sees John's head make a fractional, questioning turn. "John?"

John's heels click on the linoleum floor as he takes Sherlock's place at the head of the examination table, turning himself slightly so he can gaze down at the bullet without bending to see past the baby at his chest. "Twenty-two LR hollow point," he says crisply, hints of Captain Watson evident in his tone. "Took a few rounds just like that out of an American kid after a raid on a Taliban chief's complex." He taps a page in the file and looks up at Sherlock. "The weapon's a Beretta 950, Sherlock—it's accurate for such a little thing, but it's not powerful. You're looking at a range of fifteen metres at the outside to get that sort of deformation and penetration."

"Noted, thank you," Sherlock replies, voice unperturbed despite the sudden but not entirely unexpected leap his heart rate has taken. The half-second it takes to jolt his mind back into gear and turn to the next body feels like an eternity. "Moving on."

Having John accompany him on cases is vital—the doctor is an excellent sounding board and a rich resource of medical information—but the fits of tachycardia that have started up recently in response to John's more luminous moments are beginning to get on Sherlock's nerves.

"Samuel Orson," John says, bringing Sherlock's attention back to the Work. He tucks a hand under the baby and holds her close when she gives a small, fussy grunt. "Shot at ten forty-one, just outside the entrance to the Museum of London, right in the middle of a mobile conversation. Witnesses moved the body, so the point of origin of the shot was lost."

Sherlock lets out a rumbling 'hmmm' as he examines the entry wound. The entrance to the Museum sits above street level on the Barbican highwalk—given the angle of entry (a downward incline from entry to rest point), there's no way Mary was on street level when she made the kill. The weapon rules out sites further away than the outer buildings of the Rotunda (more for reasons of power than accuracy—between the general consensus between John and the Internet that the 950 is surprisingly accurate for such a little thing and his firsthand experience with Mary's keen marksmanship, he doubts distance is any major hindrance to her precision), and the downward angle of entry rules out equal footing. "Rooftop position," he says. The bullet in the tray is not quite as deformed as the other—Mary was more distant for this kill than the first. "Not that that narrows it down a great deal—at least four buildings are tall enough and at the right angle relative to the entrance to be possible sites."

Lestrade sighs. "Lovely."

"The report says that he was on his mobile when he was shot." John pages through Orson's file and draws a fingertip down one page. "Here. Frederick Riesch, coworker."

Sherlock scribbles the name into his notebook—if Riesch is a part of the empire as well, he's been made keenly aware that _someone_ is making a move. Whether or not he connects it to Mary is irrelevant; Sherlock needs to get in contact with the man as soon as possible, before Riesch goes to ground or gets removed as well. He has John read off the mobile number and scribbles it into his notebook next to the man's name. "We'll have to get in contact with him soon. Now, the third body?"

"Marcus McConn, shot sometime just before ten fifty-eight, twenty-six years old." John replies. He starts to shake his head sadly, then stops and furrows his brow when something on the body catches his eye. "That's. Huh. Pistol bite." He flips through McConn's file, the expression of puzzlement on his face becoming increasingly evident. "Why does he have pistol bite if he wasn't in the military?"

Sherlock has already seized McConn's dominant hand (the right) and brought it up for close examination. Lestrade and Molly sidle closer, leaning in to see the wound themselves. "Not even three months old, I'd say," Molly ventures, biting her lower lip. "Maybe he knew the killer was going to come for him soon?"

Lestrade nods. "Good idea, Molly!" At that, Molly's cheeks blaze red. She looks startled. "I'll go over his credit card records and his mobile log again."

"Don't bother," Sherlock scoffs from behind the file. He ignores John's sigh—flirting by way of wild hypotheses will not be tolerated when there is serious casework to be done. "He could have visited a friend in the United States. Furthermore, this is a professional at work. Consider the efficiency! Three kills in half an hour over such a distance means planning—lots of it—and some other connection between the three that would necessitate their immediate removal. They're not high enough on the totem pole to have heard whispers of any sort of internal cleanup, or they'd have gone to ground or sought witness protection long ago. No, he was not expecting to be killed, not until the killer was in his flat with the gun to his head."

Lestrade and Molly exchange chastised glances and watch as Sherlock goes back and examines the hands of the other two victims.

John makes a puzzled sound. "Sherlock?"

"What is it, Jo—oh! Ballinger is ex-military." Taken together, old scars from knives and shallow gunshot wounds, scarring from poryphyria cutanea tarda, early signs of cirrhosis, and chloracne on a man of Ballinger's age are reliable indicators of frontline participation in Vietnam. The man's hands are webbed with old scars, but his palms, the medial pad of his index finger, and the thenar region are well callused. Leaning in, Sherlock finds that his fingernails and cuticles smell faintly of gun oil. "Tell Lestrade to have his flat searched. Gun oil on his hands and well-maintained calluses—if he hasn't got weapons there, someone he knows does have them."

John rolls his eyes as Lestrade scrambles for his mobile. "Sherlock, that's wonderful, but look at this. If this was a contact shot, where's the exit wound?"

Sherlock's head snaps up, abandoning the old pistol-bite scars and dearth of calluses on Orson's left hand; he locks gazes with John and stalks across the morgue. "Say that again."

John looks down at McConn's body, then back up at Sherlock. His blue eyes (dilated pupils, odd) twinkle with a mixture of apprehension and anticipation—he knows he's caught Sherlock's attention and he thinks he's noticed something important (he has), but he's cautious enough to be wary of a sharp reprimand. "If he was shot closely enough to leave a burn, where is the exit wound?"

The noise that leaves Sherlock's throat must be startling; John's eyes go wide and Molly makes an odd little sound. "John. John, you_magnificent_ man, _brilliant!_" He drops to a crouch near the body and shakes open the file—yes, yes! An _upward_ angle of entry! "He was shot from below!" he hisses victoriously. He straightens and whirls in the same motion, rounding on Lestrade. "Was there an open window at the scene?! You must remember!"

"Er, well, yes, there was, he was next to the... but how did the burn get there if...?"

The shot had been terrifyingly precise, but it's not quite precise enough: another examination of the entry wound and the burn and it's obvious that the entry wound isn't centered in the burn, the way it would be if the gun had actually been against McConn's temple in such a way as to leave the imprint it did. "It's well-established that our killer is a sharpshooter, but the burn—Molly, was the burn inflicted post-mortem?"

Molly shakes her head. Sherlock dives back into the file. "Aha! One mobile phone with half of a number dialed." There are two contacts that the half-number could have been going out to—Ralph Adams or Randall McLoskey. "He was going to live, but he made the mistake of starting to place a call and then looking out the window to see if his visitor was well and truly gone."

"Oops," John says under his breath. Lestrade huffs out a laugh; Molly's caught between mortification and amusement.

"Oops indeed, John," Sherlock echoes warmly, taking the messenger bag from John and tucking the files into it before slinging it over his own shoulder. "Come. Mr Riesch may be able to shed light on things; we simply have to reach him quickly enough."

* * *

John looks surprised when Sherlock turns and strides into a small deli after they get off the tube on the way to Riesch's place of work. "Are you... actually eating?" John asks as Sherlock queues to make an order.

"Of course not. You're going to eat, and I'm going to contact Riesch." When they reach the cash register, the woman gives John a flattering, inviting look and all but coos at him and the baby as she takes his order. The only thing that prevents Sherlock from putting a stop to it by informing her about her habitual infidelity is John very pointedly standing on his left foot; this, conveniently, places John close enough to Sherlock that the woman interprets it wrongly and ceases her flirtation. John pays, and Sherlock shoots her a smug look as they leave for their table.

The chairs are cheap and wobbly, the tabletops are vaguely sticky, and the restaurant smells strongly of pickles and sliced meat. John sits gingerly, adjusting the baby as he goes, and heaves a long sigh. "This is Mary's work, isn't it?" He's obviously aware that he's right, but his expression is such an odd mix of resignation, frustration, and needing to know that Sherlock can only nod.

"It is."

John huffs out a breathy, dry laugh. "Three kills in half an hour—she really knows her stuff, doesn't she?" He shakes his head and looks down at the baby, mouth twisted in a bitter, sad smile. "Never was shy about doing what needed to be done."

Sherlock isn't sure how to respond. "The weapon she used was a signal. She needs us to be aware of these three and anyone they're connected to—she wouldn't remove them without good reason."

"Hence the call to Riesch," John sighs. "You think he's involved somehow?"

"We'll find out," Sherlock answers, retrieving his mobile. He dials the number from his notebook and puts the phone to his ear.

John's sandwich arrives just as Riesch answers his phone. "Hello?" Tenor, soft-spoken but not timid, weak Liverpudlian accent. "Who's this?"

"Uh, hi, this is... er, this is Ben," Sherlock stammers. "I'm... my friend is missing, we were going to meet for lunch but he wasn't th-there, he always shows up. When I called, the police answered and they, um, they wouldn't tell me anything." At Sherlock's pitched-up and tremulous voice, John smiles around his sandwich and shakes his head in fond resignation.

The silence on the other end of the line is short but tense. "How did you get this number?" Riesch asks. "Did someone refer you to me?" He's not unkind, but the sympathy rings false to Sherlock's keen ear.

"Oh! I kept asking the police to talk to me, but I think I, er, I think I made them mad, so they sent me to this weird bloke in some old flat on Baker Street. H-he, uh, told me to call you before, um, before he kicked me out." _He's asking how I got his number. Nervous. _Sherlock writes in his notebook, turning it so John can see.

Riesch chuckles. "Sherlock Holmes, was it? He would know." It's subtle, but Riesch sounds like someone whose expectations have been confirmed. "Listen, Ben. Sam... he got into some sketchy business with Russian investors. I'd been trying to talk him out of it for weeks, but you know how it is, all that oil money and whatnot." This isn't untrue, Sherlock notes—he brings his notebook back and scribbles in a memo about a Russian connection. "Earlier this morning, he'd called me to say he was on the brink of a huge deal with some bloke named Moroz. Ivan Moroz, I think it was, but this deal was just too good to be real. I told him to watch himself, and sure enough, when he called me again after the meeting, he... oh God, they shot him, he was on the phone with me when they did it."

Riesch's distress is played up, but he's telling the truth, so far as Sherlock can hear. He notes 'Ivan Moroz' in his Moleskine as he makes an appropriately shocked and horrified sound. "No. Sam's... he's... he's d-dead?"

"I'm afraid so, kiddo. The police won't talk because it's an ongoing investigation, right? Holmes never did follow the same rules; they probably sent you to him so you could... you know, get some closure."

The rest of the conversation is mostly 'Ben' alternately voicing devastated disbelief and inquiring about plans and dates for any funeral services (Riesch doesn't know anything, but promises to call him back with information when he gets it). John looks on with that same amused smile, working through his sandwich and tea with his left hand as the right slides soothingly up and down the baby's back. When Sherlock finally rings off, John lets out a soft laugh. "You'd be sitting on a pile of Baftas and Oscars if you'd gone into acting," he remarks.

Sherlock snorts. "Given the way most celebrities conduct themselves, I certainly wouldn't be regarded as being terribly odd. Perhaps I should consider it."

"Just don't jump on any couches or embrace Scientology and you'll be fine," John replies, finishing his tea. He laughs at Sherlock's blank look. "Nevermind that. Where are we going next?"

Thankful to be back in territory he understands, Sherlock shows John the page with 'Ivan Moroz' written on it as they leave. "Mycroft owes me a favour," he says. He hails a cab, but it drives by. "Damn. Once we have a taxi, we'll go visit him and see what we can dig up on this Russian."

Beside him, John goes strangely still and quiet, his hand moving from the baby's back to cup her head protectively. "Sherlock," he murmurs as Sherlock successfully hails a cab. "Sherlock, there's someone photographing us from the coffeehouse across the road."

Sherlock gets a look as he opens the cab door.

There, seated in the window, is a plain-faced man with a camera and dark sunglasses. The lens is aimed directly at them.


	5. Chapter Five

First, I am *terribly* sorry about being late! Chicago was utterly fantastic- if you get the chance to go to a live Welcome to Night Vale show, DO IT- but between all the running around I did up north and all of my students running me ragged over these past two days, it's been one big game of 'find fifteen minutes to write half a paragraph I'll probably hate and erase anyway'. Frankly, I'm still unhappy with it. :(

Second, I want to thank everyone for their kind words and support. I really hope things continue to meet your expectations- not a lot happens in this chapter, but it's always quiet before everything goes to hell, isn't it?

Still unbetaed and un-Britpicked. Please let me know if you spot anything!

* * *

As a boy, Sherlock once made the mistake of placing a flask full of highly purified water into the microwave and heating it. He'd been baffled when, upon removing the flask, the water didn't appear to have boiled at all. In his effort to understand why the glass was hot but the water was apparently not, he'd put a metal stirring rod into the flask. The water had leapt to violent life, hissing and spouting out of the flask and all over his hand; thirty-one years later, some of the scarring is still faintly visible over the meat of his thumb.

Having had such a learning experience with superheating, Sherlock recognises the too-still calm that rules John as he gets into the taxi. He says nothing when John tells the cabbie to go to Baker Street instead of the Diogenes Club, he doesn't comment on John's hypervigilance during the drive itself, and he absolutely does not dodge paying the cabbie like he normally would. When they disembark, he quickly scans Baker Street for any sign of unwelcome watchers (there are none, but he doubts he'd mention it even if he did see someone; it wouldn't do to risk John shooting people in plain sight) and precedes John into the flat, ensuring that everything is normal before beckoning him in.

John seems somewhat reassured by the overtures, but the rigidity doesn't leave his bearing until Sherlock closes the blinds and shuts the door. "Christ," he gasps, lowering himself into his armchair gingerly. He drops shaky hands over his face. "Jesus fucking Christ."

Given the events of the past few days, Sherlock cannot blame John for some distress, but the sheer level of anxiety the photographer has inspired seems extreme. "John, it's likely that he was simply a paparazzo. We are, after all, rather well-known."

John lifts his hands to throw an ugly look at the closed windows. "That's just as bad," he snarls. His hands slide down his face and curve over the baby as if to shield her. "They're going to take those pictures and post them on the Internet, Sherlock, don't deny it. That's going to be_my baby_ out there for any weirdo to see, that's going to be _our fucking lives_ under scrutiny from everyone and their mum, and it's not going to be the sort where they just point and laugh from the safety of their bloody armchairs. Sherlock, if it gets bad enough, _they could try to take her away from us._"

Sherlock blinks. "What?"

John sets his jaw; his expression is dangerously flat, but his eyes flash with helpless fury. "They're going to look at _every_ wild claim, Sherlock. You know what they did to you back when Mor... when that _bastard_ threw you to the wolves. You know how eagerly they snapped up Janine's story. We can fight it, we can try to talk with the local authorities when they send someone to investigate, but if we can't..." John pauses and licks his lips, blinking and looking away briefly. The dim light doesn't hide the glint of wetness at the corners of John's eyes. "If we can't dispel every last doubt, they're going to take her away."

Sherlock sits down heavily.

Generally speaking, Sherlock could care less about the papers and what they say about him—the media peddles all sorts of vicious libel on a regular basis, so why bother? He's less indifferent when the papers decide to go after John, but John is an adult and fully capable of seeking both redress and restraint from offending parties. Ostensibly, the baby is under both of their protection and therefore as immune from the media's ridiculous fabrications and hyperbole as they choose to make her.

Hearing that the lies and exaggerations his detractors so love to throw around could result in the baby being removed from John's care, something turns over sickeningly in his gut. It's a choice between sending John away with the baby—sending him somewhere where Sherlock won't be right there to watch over them—or keeping John close and risking the ensuing media circus and child protection inquest taking away the only part of John's family he has left.

There's nothing else for it. Sherlock gets out his mobile and dials his brother.

"Baby brother. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I want a media blackout on the baby," Sherlock says. Forgoing the usual ritual of sibling sniping should make the urgency of the situation clear; very, very few circumstances are dire enough to keep Sherlock from taking the piss.

Mycroft sighs, but it's his sigh of resigned acquiescence rather than any of the others. "I understand. I cannot make promises, but I will do what I can. Shall I ask Mary for assistance?"

"No," Sherlock replies after a mere moment of thought. "She'll refuse, of course—she's trying to avoid getting John and the baby targeted, not invite it. Inform her, yes, but do not ask her for help."

Muffled conversation comes from the other end of the connection. "The blackout may take time, Sherlock. The media are not as easy to influence as one might imagine, particularly when it means blocking a profitable story. In the meantime, is there anything else?"

Sherlock remembers the notebook in his pocket. Pulling it out, he flips to the page of notes he'd taken earlier today. "Ivan Moroz, Randall McLoskey, and Ralph Adams. The last two have mobile numbers." He rattles off the digits on the page, then logs in to his laptop and searches the documents on the flash drive Mary had given him. "The information Mary gave me only confirms that Adams is involved with her syndicate. I need more, particularly on Moroz. He's Russian, has something to do with oil money."

"I will see what I can uncover," Mycroft confirms. "Good luck, and be careful. Mary did not exaggerate the situation."

* * *

"Coo-ee, boys!" Mrs Hudson calls as she bumps the kitchen door open with her good hip.

Faster than Sherlock can follow, John leaps out of his chair, violently upending his bowl of palak paneer and startling the baby awake. He stares at Mrs Hudson and Lestrade standing in the kitchen door, hand halfway behind his back to a gun that isn't there, as Sherlock sits with splatters of cheese and pureed spinach dripping down one cheek.

Mrs Hudson looks like she can't decide whether she's more surprised by John's reaction or the wailing baby in the basket next to Sherlock. Lestrade has his palms up and his chin down in the universal 'easy there' posture; he's watching John's hand just as closely as John is watching him.

"Save me from people who cannot be bothered to _announce themselves reasonably_," Sherlock sighs crossly as he wipes away the palak paneer on his cheek with his napkin. He leans down and extricates the baby from her basket; she cries and fusses and complains until he's got her snug against his chest, little head tucked just under his chin. "Thank you, Mrs Hudson. John, for God's sake, sit _down_. Detective Inspector, hello. Do you have a lead?"

Lestrade doesn't enter the kitchen until John sits down again, and even then he takes a chair that puts the table and Sherlock's microscope between himself and John. "No." He sets his mobile on the table—Sherlock recognises his brother's number- and folds his arms, looking expectantly at John and Sherlock. "You need to tell me what's going on."

"Nothing's going on," John retorts, too quickly. He bristles when Lestrade gives him an exasperated look.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Mary left." He ignores John's hissed rebuke and holds up a hand to forestall any further protests. "John, _enough_. Mycroft trusts him."

John looks like he might put up a fight for a moment or so. He relents under Sherlock's insistent glare, however, and turns on Lestrade instead, leaning forward menacingly. "If you put my daughter in danger by saying something you shouldn't, Greg..."

Lestrade leans back a bit. "Got it."

That seems to satisfy John, but Sherlock needs to be sure. "Are you quite finished?"

John nods.

"_Thank_ you," Sherlock sighs exasperatedly. He looks to Lestrade and picks up where he left off. "Essentially, Mary Morstan was both counselor and underboss in Jim Moriarty's syndicate—she advised, represented him when he didn't want to show his face, and carried out his orders in his place. I suspect she was formerly with the CIA or some other high-level American agency, but Jim had something on her and forced her to do his wetwork. Eventually, she was in deep enough that he could trust her as a protégé as well as..."

The story doesn't take long to tell—five minutes at most, perhaps—but by the end of it, Lestrade looks dazed and John has relocated to the couch once again. He's taken the baby with him this time, however; when Sherlock gets up to check on them after he finishes briefing Lestrade, he finds John on his back with the baby sprawled atop his chest, each of her tiny hands wrapped tight around his index fingers. He's speaking to her in a low, affectionate tone and she seems to be listening as attentively as her three days allow.

Pleased to see John interacting instead of withdrawing, Sherlock returns to the kitchen, where the DI still sits pale and openmouthed. "Bloody hell," Lestrade breathes after a long moment. "And those three shootings—they're hers?"

Sherlock nods. "They are."

"Not the Russians?"

"Nope," Sherlock confirms, popping the 'P' at the end of the word definitively. "Bit too direct, really—if the Russians were going to take someone out, they'd make it look like an accident. They won't risk souring diplomatic ties unless it's ordered from the very top."

Lestrade groans and runs a hand over his face. "They're solved, then—all three of them?"

"Tied with a bow."

"They're solved, but we can't make arrests or even announce a suspect?"

"Precisely."

"Fuck." The DI's forehead impacts the table in unison with his curse.

"A necessary evil, unfortunately," Sherlock agrees. "Look into the ballistics report, start comparing it to weapons used in past cold cases. Better yet, put your most incompetent intern on it—we both know that the Yard's progress on converting old case files to digital is behind schedule, and even I got lost in the stacks early on." He steeples his fingers thoughtfully and considers the variables. "Get in contact with Mycroft; he can help you follow up on Moroz without creating a political firestorm."

That gets a laugh from Lestrade. "Jesus, are we lucky that you're on our side," he chuckles, shaking his head in affectionate disbelief. He glances toward the sitting room with a bit of concern, then leans in and murmurs, "You going to be all right?"

"John is not a danger to me or to his daughter," Sherlock replies, equally quietly. "To others? Perhaps, but I will do my best to mitigate that."

"Is he armed?"

Sherlock shakes his head once. He's been checking on the gun every six hours, carefully lifting the floorboard beneath his bed and examining the dust on the Upmann cigar box—so far, gun and box have remained undisturbed since he placed them there.

Lestrade looks relieved. "Right. I'll... go put Jones on the cold cases, then." He steps hesitantly toward the sitting room, then changes his mind and takes his leave through the kitchen door.

Once the table is clean and the leftovers are packed away, Sherlock checks in on John again. The doctor is still stretched out on the couch, head propped up on a pillow and the baby asleep atop his chest; the only sign that he's awake is the tender stroke of his fingers over her fuzzy head.

John glances up at Sherlock when he sits on the coffee table. "I'm a fucking worthless dad," he murmurs. He toys with the fine, colorless hair on his daughter's head, deft fingers trailing lovingly over the soft indentation of her anterior fontanelle. "Scaring her awake, hiding on the sofa every time someone mentions her mother, haven't even named her yet... they wouldn't be wrong to take her away, give her to a mum and a dad who'll love her like she deserves." He runs one fingertip over her cheek; she smacks her lips and wiggles her tongue in her sleep. "God, she's so beautiful."

Sherlock isn't sure what to say. Subjectively speaking, John deserves his daughter simply by dint of being John Watson; everything to do with Mary only confirms this fact. Objectively speaking, John really has been less than stellar as a parent. However, also objectively speaking, another abandonment by someone he trusts almost certainly gives him considerable latitude for behaviour that would typically be regarded as Not Good. Sherlock knows John prefers his honest opinion to whatever platitudes common society might recommend he give, so he tries to reformulate his thoughts in a way that will convey his point properly. "You have been hurt." He steeples his fingers in front of his lips to keep his hands occupied. He's come to understand hurt on some rudimentary level over the past year, and it makes him uncomfortable to talk about it. "I... admit I was a part of that, but this hurt is... not the same, perhaps. I am neither your wife nor the mother of your newborn child."

At that, John chuckles. "Jesus, isn't that a thought?"

Sherlock snorts. "It'd ruin my figure, John. Honestly." He grins as John's chuckles turn into that high pitched giggle that Sherlock can never quite comprehend as belonging to an ex-soldier. Soon, though, he presses on- he has an argument to make. "The point is, John, you are grieving, and as I am given to understand them, even the simplest grieving practices excuse many typically inexcusable behaviours that occur proximate to the traumatic event."

Shrugging, John gives Sherlock a lopsided smile. "Suppose they do. Doesn't excuse it, in my mind." He looks down at his daughter and traces the tiny, curled shell of her ear. "I'm her dad. I'm meant to care for her no matter what happens." Shaking his head, John curls in to place a kiss atop the baby's crown. "Mary left us behind—it's not like she died. What does it say about me as a father that I haven't got past it and done my job?"

"Nothing," Sherlock says, because it's true—the scar between his fifth and sixth ribs is proof of the pain and incapacitation that comes with betrayal. He could not be considered weak because he struggled to function after being shot; it follows, then, that John cannot and should not be considered weak because he is struggling to function after being betrayed and dealt an emotional blow as crippling as any bullet wound. He places his hand over John's where it rests on the baby. "It says nothing at all."

John heaves a long, tired sigh. "God, I hope you're right."

The baby grunts, almost as if in agreement.

Atop her back, John's fingertips find their way between Sherlock's and stay.


	6. Chapter Six

Woohoo, (somewhat) on time this week!

First off, warnings: insensitivity about PTSD, brief mentions of suicide, being followed.

Second: To everyone who's commented and/or left kudos- you're marvellous human beings and you should feel good about yourselves. Thank you so much for your support!

Still unbetaed and un-Britpicked. Constructive criticism and mentions of typos or other errors are deeply, deeply appreciated.

* * *

John wakes up just as Sherlock finishes the baby's morning feed (06:44, sixteen point one millilitres). He shuffles into the kitchen slowly but not stiffly; as he roots through cabinets and the refrigerator, his movements are simply those of a tired man still struggling to achieve something resembling wakefulness.

No nightmares, then. Unexpected, but good. "Hello, John."

John grunts, lifts a hand, and flops it in a half-hearted approximation of a greeting. He squints into a cereal box with sleepy suspicion and sighs. "No food in."

"Is there ever?" Sherlock quips. Over his shoulder, the baby lets out a burp.

A half-loaf of bread John finds under the sink is rejected and binned; Sherlock is quite sad to see such a lushly verdant example of penicillium mould treated so dismissively. "You've got to have something in. When was the last time you did the shopping?" John finishes his search of the cabinets, then doubles back to the bin and peers in with morbid fascination. "Jesus. Another day under the sink and it'd be barking at me."

Sherlock frowns. "It's penicillium, John. A fungus."

John rolls his eyes and sighs, "It's a joke, Sherlock." He pads back down the hallway to Sherlock's room and shuts the door; shortly thereafter, he emerges in his street clothes. "I'm going to do the shopping. Back in a mo."

Surprised, Sherlock watches John tug his coat on and cross the room to the windows to check the weather. "You're going out." He evaluates John's bearing, searching for any sign of hypervigilance or tension.

The scrutiny doesn't escape John's notice. He stops and angles an exasperated stare up at Sherlock, running his tongue over the edge of his upper incisiors and rolling the fingers of his left fist as he considers his response. At length, he settles for snapping, "I'll be fine, thanks," dropping a brief but gentle kiss on the baby's cheek, and marching back across the room to the door, back straight and jaw set. He doesn't quite slam the door when he departs, but it's a near thing.

Sherlock goes to the window and lifts the curtain aside just enough to see John briskly strolling southward on Baker Street.

He can't help wondering what it is that people have said to John to make such a reaction his automatic response to someone showing concern.

* * *

Two blocks.

Two blocks—up to the intersection of Baker Street and Marylebone—and John is completely failing to hold on to his righteous anger over the way Sherlock had looked at him.

It's mostly because Sherlock _hadn't _been looking at him _that_ way_, _really.

* * *

_"Yer goin' out?" Harry demands from the couch, her Prada pumps propped up on the glass coffee table. She already has a beer bottle in hand. It's cheap, acrid, and incongruous against the expensive leather furniture and Harry's rumpled designer dress. "Johnny, y' can't go out there." She looks about as concerned as a person can whilst inebriated at half past noon._

_ John furrows his brow. "I want lunch, Harry, and you haven't done the shopping."_

_ "Did so," Harry slurs. She grins sloppily and shows him the bottle. Its mates are in the refrigerator, all thirteen of them. A pair of empties sits on the coffee table, one lies on its side in the kitchen sink, and one was in the bin in the loo, which still smelt faintly of sick as of this morning._

_ There had been a time when John would have argued with Harry, would have played his part. Would have said things like 'you shouldn't do this to yourself, Harry,' or maybe 'that's enough, you've had enough, we're going home'. He would have dumped the bottles in the sink and called up the rehabilitation clinic. That sort of thing._

_ Now, though? Now, when he's barely survived after weeks of surgeries and infection and more surgeries, when he's got nothing left of everything he built for himself in uni, when all of his plans for his life have vanished into haze? Now, not so much. He barely has the energy to feed himself most days, never mind manage his sister's belligerent alcoholism._

_ He notices Harry looking at him concernedly again. "Y'see, Johnny, that's just the thing. Y'got that look on yer face."_

_ "What look?"_

_ Harry shrugs. "Y'knoww, th' army look. Like yer gonna go offta war. Y'can't go out t'war at Tesco, Johnny, yer... yer gonna hurt someone."_

_ John knows he should drop it, should just leave and not engage, but something in him rears up and snarls at the implication that he's a danger to anyone because he was in the military. "Come again?"_

_ "'S that... that thing, the PS... the PTSD thing, innit? Read about it in the papers. You lot come home and it's like, someone's car backfires and y'freak out, right? Don' wanna hafta bail yer arse outta jail. Expensive shit, that."_

_ John signs for the bedsit not three hours later._

* * *

No, it hadn't been that look.

The problem was, it hadn't been the _other_ look, either.

* * *

_"Consider going out a bit, making friends," Doctor Geraldine Villiet says gently, as if to a shy animal or a small child. "Participating in activities like hiking, art, and social nights is important for readjusting." Jowly, pallid, hunched, and bespectacled, she seems to be the die by which every doddering, over-involved, elderly widow is pressed, right down to the too-proximate pointing and unsolicited life prescriptions._

_ John stares out the window of the office, unwilling and unable to look any longer at the faded, dusty spines of outdated self-help books or framed prints of unsettling, off-pink peonies._

_ "John?"_

_ Against his better judgement, he turns. "Yes?"_

_ Jesus, the fucking things are **everywhere**. Peonies on the notepad. Peonies on the plastic barrels of her pens. Peonies on her upholstery, a cheap fabric peony pinned to her lumpy pink jumper, even a cross-stiched peony on the goddamn door hanger. Peonies, peonies, peonies, in every hue and shade of not-quite-pink imaginable. John has clearly died and gone to Hell._

_ Villiet looks at him like she knows something, like she's some sort of worried, beneficent saviour ready to bestow her healing touch upon the despondent. "John, it won't solve anything."_

_ The confusion that causes is just enough to break the borderline-mesmeric horror of not-pink peonies. "What?"_

_ "It's not a solution, John. I know things hurt—I know it's so hard to readjust, to fit in, to forget everything you've had to see—but ending your life isn't the answer."_

_ John stares outright. "I'm not suicidal." It's true. He doesn't want to die—he just wants to be able to **live**_ _again. "Really. I'm not."_

_ Villiet looks at him pityingly. She's clearly made up her mind, dearth of supporting evidence be damned. "John, it's nothing to be ashamed of—"_

_ Deciding whether to laugh, cry, or scream is too difficult, so John opts for getting up and leaving the peony-infested office immediately. A few phone calls later, he's scheduled to meet with Doctor Ella Thompson the following Wednesday._

_ Thankfully, the peonies do not feature in any of his dreams, good or bad._

* * *

No, Sherlock's expression certainly hadn't been that sort—he might fancy himself above the rest of humanity, but he'd sooner burst into flames than aggressively pitied anyone.

John sighs as he waits at the Marylebone crosswalk. Knowing Sherlock, he's probably making some sort of spreadsheet of John's behaviour over the past three days, cataloguing all of the novel behaviours before determining their causes and then extrapolating John's potential states of mind upon returning to the flat.

Not necessarily a bad thing, that. The git needs a bit of emotional intelligence, even if it's only a quantitative understanding.

He strikes out across Marylebone with a small crowd of other pedestrians. There's a woman to his right with bleached, purple-tipped hair and tattered skinny jeans carrying a portfolio like the ones art students use to transport canvases; just ahead of her, two men in suits and coats laugh companionably about Manchester United's rubbish performance as of late. On his left, a woman in a coat the colour of candied cherries talks loudly on a mobile phone as the man next to her keeps pace with a longsuffering, resigned expression. He tries to read further into the details—Purple Tips is in postgraduate school for art, the football fans are businessmen, Red Coat and Bored are married or siblings—but the generalities are all he can come up with, and he doubts he's even come to the right general conclusions. Sherlock would mock him, were he present and aware of John's meagre efforts.

Lacking anything better to do, John gives up being scientific about it as a bad job and makes up stories about people all the way to and through the Tesco. A shuffling, balding man with an ancient leather briefcase becomes a genius linguist who, upon seeing an ad in the Tube on his way home later today, will make the crucial connection that will let him translate the Voynich Manuscript. A quiet, somber-faced little girl walking beside her quiet, somber-faced mother is the scion of a long line of psychics, and her powers of precognition will soon eclipse even those of her grandmother. The old woman at the till in the shop with the faint remnant of a Russian accent has a long and storied history as an M16 double-agent planted deep in the Soviet engineering corps, where she diverted shipments of uranium and sabotaged centrifuges at several reactors before being recalled from Chernobyl mere days before the nuclear accident in 1986.

Because he's paying attention to the people around him, though, John notices the man in a worn jacket and tatty trousers who casually throws away his cigarette, detaches himself from a doorframe, and begins following him home.

"Oh, come _on_," John breathes as his mind and body automatically settle into the electrified calm of _enemy contact imminent. _He assesses his route, decides on points where attacks are most likely to come; flexing his hands, he recalls the contents of the grocery bags and their utility as impromptu weapons (wine bottle, _excellent_). He knows his mobile is back at the flat—he'd not bothered to take it with him—but he also knows that he's well within view of the CCTV cameras along the route. Without tipping or turning his head, he glances up and makes eye contact with the nearest camera, willing Mycroft or one of the minions he undoubtedly has monitoring the feeds to see, _see, he's being followed—_

The camera pivots on its mounting.

John blinks—three short, three long, three short. He repeats it once, just to be clear, and then shifts his gaze to the windshields of parked cars, bus shelters, and the mirrored sunglasses of passers-by, trying to get a look at his follower and gauge the likelihood that he'll close the distance between them.

In the brief glimpses he manages to get, it seems the man is staying about three metres behind and watching him closely, even matching his pace when John pretends to slow down and examine a Pepsi ad at one of the bus shelters. John doesn't relax, of course, but he does reexamine potential motivations for the man to be trailing him. Theft is right out—he's got groceries and little else, and there are plenty of tourists wandering along with the commuters and breakfasters. After seeing the cameraman yesterday, John is inclined to think the two are related somehow, but he can't be completely certain without better evidence of a connection. The guy could well be someone they'd angered in the course or aftermath of an investigation; there are more than enough of those sorts of people running around or sitting in prison.

Relief wars with anxiety as the front door of the flat comes into sight. Even though it's likely that the man already knows who he is and where he lives, he's extremely unhappy about leading them back to the flat, to Sherlock, and the baby. At the same time, he wants to be back on home territory, where he can summon Sherlock with a shout if need be. Despite his better judgement, he speeds up a bit.

His heart slams into his throat when the door opens and a chest-height swatch of purple fabric appears. "Sherlock!"

The purple fabric moves out of the door along with the rest of Mrs Hudson and her new, large handbag. She spots John and waves cheerily. "Oh, John! Hello! Just look at you, up so early!"

John gets up to the doorstep and glances back nervously, only to discover that his tail has disappeared from sight. Panting, he keeps scanning, hoping to spot the man _somewhere._

"John? Is everything all right?"

"Um." He turns to Mrs Hudson, but he can't help looking back over his shoulder every few seconds. Where did the bastard go so quickly? "I. Er. Groceries. I got them. The groceries, that is," he replies, lifting one arm like the bags in his hand aren't already obvious. He glances back again. "We didn't have any, uh, food. You know." His follower is still entirely gone from sight, but the sensation of being watched has redoubled. It's making his skin crawl.

Mrs Hudson pats his shoulder; he jumps. She doesn't notice. "That's lovely of you. Typical Sherlock, forgetting to feed himself." She edges around John and down to the pavement. "I'll be back in an hour or two. Morning coffee with the girls."

"Right. Er. Have fun," says John.

When one last sweep of the street fails to produce his tail, he backs inside, shuts the door, and locks it.


End file.
